TV Moves A Step Closer To the Womb

By DAVE ITZKOFF

Published: May 21, 2006

WHO can we now rely upon in an age when Big Bird is no longer considered trustworthy? Earlier this year, when the Sesame Workshop released a DVD series, ''Sesame Beginnings,'' designed for children 6 months to 2 years old, it sparked a surprisingly intense debate: public health advocates attacked the studio behind Bert and Ernie, insisting that no amount of television viewing is appropriate for children that young.

Yet the more fervently the television industry is warned about such dangers, the more intently it seems to want to touch the stove. The Disney Channel has recently turned ''Mickey Mouse Clubhouse,'' an animated show intended to reintroduce Walt Disney's cash rodent to preschoolers aged 2 to 5, into a bona fide hit.

And last week, a channel called BabyFirstTV, initially available to DirecTV subscribers, became the first 24-hour cable and satellite network to offer programming aimed at viewers between 6 months and 3 years old.

Before advocacy groups take their shot BabyFirstTV, perhaps they should give a thought -- quickly, before Viacom launches MTV Zygote and Nickelodeon Embryo -- to the poor programmers charged with developing such content. Toddlers may be good at communicating what they want in a sippee cup, but they are not nearly as effective at conveying what they want in a television show: they simply will not sit still at focus groups, and are more likely to masticate extensive research questionnaires than to fill them out.

The founders of BabyFirstTV (including a former executive of the advertising firm BBDO and the former head of operations for the Israeli Network) clearly came prepared to immunize their offspring against the same criticism that ''Sesame Beginnings'' faced: they issued a guidebook full of approving pediatricians, psychologists and educators and the repeated injunction to parents to take an active role in their children's viewing. The guide says that television can ''enlighten your baby's experience by opening up a world of imagination and images that he ordinarily wouldn't see in everyday life.''

As you'd expect from new parents, it all sounds a bit boastful and a bit defensive. Especially when measured against the actual content of BabyFirstTV, some of the most gently benign programming ever to float across the airwaves. In almost every way, BabyFirstTV is an ideal match for its prospective demographic -- at its best it is spirited, lively and full of simple wonder, and at its worst it is utterly innocuous.

The lineup consists entirely of short-form videos, both live-action and animated. There are no commercial breaks between shorts, and as viewers more accustomed to ''CSI,'' ''24'' or ''The O'Reilly Factor'' will immediately notice, the pacing is decidedly unhurried: when an on-screen graphic introduces a segment about giraffes, you can expect several minutes of grazing herbivores, and when a cartoon jigsaw puzzle assembles itself, you'd better believe its pieces will try every possible configuration before the picture is complete.

Beyond the consistently bright palettes and upbeat instrumental music found in each video, the only element that unites these shorts is the BabyFirstTV logo, a smiling flower whose petals change color to indicate the types of skills the segment is intended to teach: a yellow flower, for example, signifies a lesson on patterns of thinking (like a recurring, one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other routine called ''What's Different?''), while red stands for language and vocabulary (a short film about sign language), and pink means social and emotional skills (a video of children playing in a park).

The gradations can be so subtle at times that one wonders if the distinctions are even necessary, particularly when some of BabyFirstTV's best segments are those that teach lessons that can't be as easily categorized -- catchy songs about why it's O.K. for a parent to put your security blanket in the washing machine, or what will happen if you try to cram too many things in a closet -- or those that appear to teach no lesson at all.

It is when BabyFirstTV devotes valuable minutes to images of nothing more complicated than exotic animals wandering in the jungle, or infants playing in a pit of plastic balls, that it comes closest to fulfilling its mission: providing its young audience with one more window into an exciting, unknown world where every sensory stimulation is brand new, and is potentially being experienced for the very first time.

And if BabyFirstTV's viewers are anything like this former child, they will eagerly anticipate the many short films that introduce them to the experience of creating art, like ''Picture Pad,'' in which a pair of disembodied hands slooooowly sketches an illustration with colored pencils, and ''Sandman,'' an utterly transfixing segment in which an artist draws a picture with his fingertips on a backlit canvas of sand. (Not surprisingly, ''Sandman'' turns up with particular frequency on ''Rainbow Dreams,'' the channel's late-night schedule meant to lull restless viewers of all ages back to sleep.)